‘Getaway’ new leader in year’s-worst-movie race

Well, “Paranoia” didn’t hold onto the lead for long. “Getaway,” Ethan Hawke’s car-chase flick that opened today, is the new leader in the clubhouse for the title of Worst-Reviewed Movie of 2013.

“Getaway,” a 90-minute movie featuring about 45 minutes of car chases, has a score of 2 on the Tomatometer. That gives it a single-pont lead over “Paranoia,” which held the title for two weeks.

Of course, some grading-on-the-curve (no pun intended; really) critic could screw things up. When I left for lunch today, “Getaway ” had a 1. The one lonesome Fresh review was this lukewarm tout from a writer in Toronto. Now there’s a second so-called positive review from Lawrence Toppman of the Charlotte Observer.

So that doubles the score. One more of these “well, it doesn’t suck too bad” reviews, and it’ll fall back into a tie with “Paranoia.”

It helps that among Top Critics, the score is ZERO. And some 30 have weighed in, so that can’t be dismissed as a small sample size.

I especially like Rene Rodriguez’s take. Pointing out all the mayhem the car, a souped-up Mustang, endures, the Miami Herald critic wrote, “The Shelby Mustang driven by Hawke isn’t just the fastest car in all of Bulgaria: It also has the ability to heal itself, like Wolverine.”

Or as Peter Hartlaub, writing for Friday mySA, noted, “With the beating Brent (Hawke) inflicts on the car, the Mustang would need 12 tires, 17 clutches and at least 147 gallons of gas to reach the film’s finale.”

And a partridge in a pear tree…

Anyway, my favorite part of Toppman’s review is a comment from a guy named Jason Williams, who called him out thusly:

“I’m sorry but how you can possibly say that the writers craft a story that makes sense? NOTHING makes sense in this movie. Not. A. Single. Thing. I appreciate that different people see different things in a movie and that some people enjoy a movie where others do not. This one is it’s own special case. By giving this any kind of a ‘well, it was OK’ rating will encourage studios to make more pap like this. As a critic, part of your role is to call out this excessive dross for what it is and bury it!”

I don’t agree with the part about bad reviews will keep studios from making bad movies. Overseas markets have an insatiable appetite for American action movies, apparently even the bad ones. Action requires less dialogue than comedy, which is why it translates better.

But anyone who calls out damning-with-faint-praise reviews is an action hero in my book.